Tarn suppressed his misgivings, remembering the rather startling taste when Regal had shared his flask. "Well, I might have to take your word for it. The last time somebody showed their hospitality to me with a bottle, it didn't work out too well."

"Head hurts?" wondered the gully dwarf.

"Yeah, for starters," Tarn replied, still feeling the cottony thickness in his mouth and the queasiness in his stomach.

Regal sniffed, somewhat contemptuously. Any further critique was prevented by the sudden appearance of two more Aghar, who seemed to crawl out from beneath a nearby boulder. One was chubby and short even for a gully dwarf, while the other was taller with a red face framed by a bristling mane of frizzy hair.

"Regal Way-Too-Smart!" the short one declared, beaming. "You got home in time for… what? We gonna do something, I know." He turned to his companion while scratching his bushy head. "Why he come home?"

The second dwarf with an entirely hairless, egg-shaped face scowled. A seared and frazzled fringe of hair was visible at the back of the Aghar's head. The skin of his face was blistered. Even his eyebrows had apparently been burned away.

Regal cleared his throat with great formality. "This Poof Firemaker," he declared, pointing at the singed gully dwarf. "And Duck Bigdwarf."

Duck was undoubtedly one of the shortest Aghar Tarn had ever met. Even after he rose from his sweeping bow-a gesture which dropped him onto his face for a disconcerting moment-his head came barely to the level of Tarn's chest. Looking down, Tarn saw that the tangle of Duck's hair was alive with fleas. Stepping quickly backward, Tarn tried not to let his distaste show.

Poof also bowed, and Tarn saw that the burn line neatly intersected his skull into fore and rear halves. It seemed obvious to Tarn that the Aghar Firemaker had held his face a little too close to some incendiary project. This suspicion was reinforced by the sight of a small tinderbox that the gully dwarf proudly held up for the half-breed's inspection.

"Come and have some grog, now?" asked Regal, showing every intention of crawling under the boulder where the pair of gully dwarves had been. It appeared to be no more than a small and dingy niche. "Plenty even for big thirsty guy like you."

"Thanks a lot," the half-breed tried to explain, "but I've got to be going. I want to look around a bit."

His reluctance was only partly out of distaste. In fact, his thought processes had finally begun to grapple with the next question. Where should he go? The answer was obvious: back to Hybardin, back to his father, and especially back to Belicia. He would have to travel by boat, but his hopes were dampened by the sight of the Agharhome waterfront. There were a series of small jetties made from tumbled rock, but these looked like precarious places even for walking, much less docking a boat. And there were no watercraft anywhere in evidence, which, he realized with another glance at the trio of Aghar, was probably very sensible.

Across the harbor, mostly hidden by the curling shoulder of the sea's steep shoreline, lay the crowded and busy waterfront of Daerforge. He saw the cables of the chain boats far out over the water followed their pylons to the distant, illuminated height of the Life-Tree. Could he get there, somehow sneaking aboard some dark dwarf boat without being noticed? He didn't care for his chances.

And then, before his disbelieving eyes, flaming balls of winged fire burst upward from the Urkhan Sea and soared high into the air.

"How is your ammunition holding out?" Belicia had located Fortus Silkseller on the rampart over the southern stairway and now she shouted over the din of howling dark dwarves. Just below them-despite having suffered hundreds of casualties-the Daergar still pressed against Farran's shield wall. In several hours of battle the doughty Hylar had given up no more than six or eight steps on the wide stairway.

"We've used half our arrows," replied the grim merchant. "A while ago I told 'em to start taking their time, to make each shot count."

"It looks like they paid attention."

Looking over the mass of bodies sprawled across the dockside below, Belicia saw that many of the dark dwarves had been felled by the missiles sent down by the Hylar archers. Just below the wall several ladders lay scattered and broken, and the dead Daergar bristled with so many arrows that they looked like pincushions.

"They thought they could bypass the stairs," Fortus said with a loud spit, followed by a hearty chuckle. "Wanted to take us by surprise with a sudden rush and a few ladders. Guess we made 'em think otherwise."

"Good job," Belicia said. She pointed toward the center of the line where a dozen or so Daergar carried on with an attack that seemed to finally be losing some of its relentless ferocity. "Good timing, too."

Farran shouted hoarsely, and his shield wall pressed forward. In a few seconds they had regained all the steps they had lost since the attack began. Fortus laughed with real pleasure, and Belicia nodded in satisfaction. "It seems like the attack on the stairs is starting to slacken a little bit."

"About time." Despite his gruff manner, the merchant-turned-warrior looked immensely pleased. "What about the other three sides?"

"Every one of them has held. It seems like none of them got hit as hard as you did here. We're all grateful. I know you've paid the price."

"Your boy there… Farran…" Fortus cleared his throat, "he's doing a yeoman's job, by Reorx. I was in the Lance War you know, and I've never seen a shield wall hold against such a press. The fellow looks young, but I'm here to tell you that he fights like a seasoned veteran."

"Yes… he does well," Belicia replied softly, her eyes misting at the memory of her young sergeant mere weeks earlier, stumbling over each foot as he was among the rawest of recruits. "I guess war has a way of maturing you quickly." A thought jarred her, as she recalled one of the hundreds of reports she had received today. "Is there any word on your friend?"

"Hoist Backwrench, you mean?"

"Yes. I know he was standing in the forefront of the shield wall. I heard he went down in the fight. How does he fare?"

"He'll live," Fortus said, trying unsuccessfully to contain his emotions. "I don't think they'll be able to save his eyes, though."

"I'm sorry." Belicia said no more, but she was touched by the obvious depth of the grizzled dwarf's feeling, and by the heavy toll this day was taking on the brave Hylar all along the waterfront.

" 'Just have yer warriors keep holdin' the line, here'-that was what Hoist told me, when I saw him a little while ago."

"I will. And you save those arrows, all right? I have a feeling we're going to need them pretty soon."

"It's a promise, my lady!" Fortus threw her a rigid salute, a true honorific. "You know, if the Daergar pull back a bit, we can even send a quick sortie down there and bring back some we've already shot."

"Good. Look for a chance, and then go," Belicia agreed, heartened.

She went to a small tower that rose from the rampart over the stairs. From here, she had a wide view of Hybardin's waterfront. Her earlier observation was borne out as the exhausted dark dwarves, who had gained only a small foothold on the steep stairway, finally withdrew entirely to catch their breath on the docks and reorder their decimated companies. From her vantage, the captain could see that many more boats were gathering near the shore, oars stirring the water as they advanced in neat ranks. Apparently, reinforcements were coming from Daerforge-and no doubt from Theibardin as well.

Belicia was about to make another round of her defensive positions when the ground underfoot was rocked by an unnatural tremor. Explosions split the air, thundering and ringing with a dire, ground-shaking force. Spots of unnatural brightness began to glow across the black water. One after another these patches swelled into flaming eruptions like fiery rockets which shot into the air, trailing sparks and leaving hissing trails of steam in their wake.